April 5, 1935 - ON A MOUNTAINSIDE
Incidents on a back-road journey thru Arizona and New Mexico; Tucson and Phoenix are spoiled, but the rest—oh, what a country!
The Washington Daily News—Friday—April 5—1935 Page 27
ON A MOUNTAINSIDE By ERNIE PYLE
THERE are many little incidents on an 8000-mile drive in strange country. Incidents that, thought back upon, give you a chuckle, or send a warm feeling thru your heart, or make you mad.
Such incidents, for example, as that of the old man on the mountain. It was in northwestern Arizona, when we left the dirt road and struck out thru the cactus toward a gold mine up on the mountain side.
When we got there, after much bumping and twisting, we found the mine was not working. But we found an old man living there, in a one-room shack, all alone except for his dog. The dog, a friendly little collie, was called, of all things for the desert, “Toodles.”
The man was 72, bareheaded, his whiskers were white, he wore a plaid flannel shirt and clean overalls. We thought he looked fine, but he apologized all over the place for his appearance. He got out his keys and took us thru the idle ore mill, explained the dust-covered machinery.
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HE HAD been right there on that very spot for 22 years. When the mine was running he worked there. When it closed, he stayed on as watchman. He just gathers wood, and cooks his meals, and watches. He doesn’t see very many people. I don’t know what he will do when his little dog dies. She has saved his life twice, by warning him of rattlesnakes in the cabin. She barks differently when she sees a snake.
One of the first things he asked was what day it was. We told him Thursday. “That’s what I thought,” he said, he walks down to the road (four miles each way) to meet the stage. It brings him groceries and mail, so he said. We watched it go by while we were there, a white truck, far down the mountainside. We were going to take him down if it stopped. We three stood there with our eyes shaded, watching the truck for 10 minutes. But it didn’t stop. “Nothing for me today, I guess,” he said. Some day I’m going to send him a postcard, so the stage driver will have something to stop for.
He was so glad we came. He stood and waved to us till we were far away.
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THEN there was the night when, after miles of driving over dirt roads thru swirling snow, we came to a little town. The hotel was a Fred Harvey hotel, right in the railroad station. But, as cold and miserable as we were, the price for a room was too high, and I asked the clerk if he has nothing cheaper.
“Yes,” he said, “there IS a room in the back of the hotel, but (and here I could imagine he drew himself up a little) it isn’t a Harvey room.”
Harvey room or no Harvey room, we took it. It turned out to be a room for engineers on the Santa Fe, a very warm and very clean room. We liked the room very much, but I could never have told the clerk so. For he was a Harvey man.
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THE little town of Wickenburg, Ariz. advertises itself as the “dude ranch capital of the world.”
At noon time in a greasy-spoon restaurant there, we saw three dude ranch guests and one “cowboy,” their escort, having lunch.
The “cowboy” was dressed in a green gabardine uniform, it cut sort of a cross between cowboy’s clothes and Mexican balcony-singer’s. He was obviously synthetic.
One of the lady guests was full of whisky and imagined her cowboy as a great big he-man. She was cooing and laying her head upon his great Hollywood breast. He seemed to enjoy it.
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PHOENIX and Tucson do not seem to me a part of the Southwest. They are too Chamber-of-Commerce, too resort. You might as well go to Miami Beach as to Tucson.
But the rest of the Southwest, from the Pecos to the Colorado, oh, what a country! Its ancient history—Santa Fe was a thriving village long before the Pilgrims ever heard of Plymouth Rock; its modern history—the wild days of mining and cattle raising are an epic probably not duplicated anywhere in the world; its surface—the diverse and luxurious desert plants, beautiful in bloom, solemn and mysterious when bare; the land itself—spaceless, free, a land of humility and good taste. I love the Southwest.
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